Anderson Silva’s New Humanity

Chael
Sonnen’s performance against Anderson
Silva Saturday may have helped the event exceed business
expectations: Dana White hinted to reporters that projections
signaled a big pay-per-view number. Short-term gain is great, but
you have to wonder what Sonnen may have done to Silva’s potential
as an attraction down the line.

Prior to the Sonnen fight, both Silva and the UFC often spoke of
hypothetical plans involving bouts at light heavyweight,
heavyweight, and potentially against Georges
St. Pierre. Now that Sonnen has proven Silva isn’t made of
metal, those fights have lost a good deal of their appeal. There’s
intrigue in watching an unstoppable 185-pound fighter try to
compete in a heavier class, but little point in watching it after
he’s been through what can legitimately be described as a
beating.

Granted, certain fights wouldn’t have much opportunity to go the
same way: Mauricio Rua
isn’t likely to lay on Silva for five rounds, and St. Pierre may
not necessarily have the size or power to do what Sonnen did. But
that’s beside the point: in dominating Silva for so long, Sonnen
calls into question Silva’s previously unquestioned dominance. You
move up a class when you’ve steamrolled yours.

There are parallels being drawn between Silva and Brock
Lesnar, another highly-touted champion who looked lost for a
round against Shane
Carwin in July before staging an impressive comeback. In both
cases, the title-holders didn’t force a mistake out of their
opponents so much as capitalize on their errors -- but Silva took
far more of a stomping for a far longer period of time. There is
now 23 minutes of footage that paints Anderson in an entirely
different light. I feel no differently about him (if anything, my
opinion has been elevated) but audiences looking for an invincible
fighter taking new challenges against bigger athletes may be
soured.

I -- and much of the UFC’s audience, I expect -- would still
appreciate a Silva/St. Pierre superfight, particularly because it
now seems more competitive and because it seems unfair to deny two
of the sport’s greatest athletes a chance to compete when they’re
contemporaries. If St. Pierre defeats Josh
Koscheck and Silva rolls Vitor
Belfort, it’s really the only fight of any significance left:
seeing St. Pierre against Fitch again would be criminal.

The Sonnen fight may have harmed Silva’s potential for bigger box
office, but the trade-off may be more success in his natural class:
appearing to be human is one way to get more humans watching.